9. Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

L aughter. Light and airy and untroubled. “You are too canny, Thomas.”

Izzie’s lips pulled back in a slight smile as she paused in the shadows outside the library, listening in on the conversation within.

That was new. Sylvie using his given name.

Good for her. Only a week and a half in and there was progress in Sylvie’s part of the mission—finding her way into Thomas’s bed.

This was good— good.

Repeating that fact seemed to help overshadow the stab of jealousy that sliced across Izzie’s own gut at hearing his name from Sylvie’s lips. It was an intimate sound, the way it rolled off of Sylvie’s tongue.

Izzie couldn’t quite place the jealousy—everything was playing out as it should, though slowly.

These were the parts they were assigned to in order to ingrain themselves into Thomas’s life and watch over him.

Izzie was feral. Sylvie was irresistible. Hal caught any danger that may stray past them outside of Ravenstone. They had all been trained by the Guardians well.

Yet, the whole plot hinged on Sylvie seducing Lord Hedstrom, firmly ensconcing herself in his bed, so that Sylvie could watch over him at night.

Days were to be Izzie’s—because who would question her odd wanderings about the castle as the mad one?

Izzie frowned.

Except it hadn’t played out quite to plan as of yet.

This far into the mission and the sharing of duties had been a bit of a disaster—and it would be until Sylvie could charm her way into Thomas’s sheets.

Until then, Izzie had to take on watching over Thomas at night in addition to the day. Four hours of sleep a night was not enough.

But she couldn’t fail at this mission. She couldn’t.

Caution demanded her vigilance no matter how tired she was. Callum and Nemity were right about Thomas’s state of mind. She’d seen for herself how he liked to walk the cliffs near Ravenstone, his outside foot oftentimes half off the edge into the abyss. How his body would still, only one slight lean away from death, and he would stand like a statue, his dark coat flapping, challenging the wind to send him to his demise.

Sylvie laughed again, drawing Izzie’s attention into the library.

A laugh that Thomas didn’t return.

Wrong as it was, his lack of a reaction eased the pang of jealousy in her gut.

For how much she thought Thomas was an overbearing ogre, prone to rudely manhandling her, there was something about him. Something about the way he moved through the castle, like he was a part of the ancient stones that surrounded him. It made it hard to look away from him.

She wasn’t sure why she was so fascinated with the man.

Probably because she was trying to weed through the layers of him—trying to figure out why he hated everything around him so much. And she kept getting sidetracked by the hard muscles set on his tall frame and the unyielding lines of his entirely too sinful face.

He’d been a hard one to figure, for he tried hard to avoid her at every corner. And why shouldn’t he? She would avoid the mad, feral girl as well, if she were him.

Nemity hadn’t been able to give her a lot of information as to her cousin’s current state of mind. She only knew that Thomas had always been a kind, though serious person, but after his six-year disappearance, he had come back to Scotland nothing but mean.

Izzie already knew that wasn’t entirely true. Thomas wasn’t thoroughly malicious—no one was. The man was capable of caring. He’d taken her in, under his care, even if she was a rabid long-lost relative.

Of course, he’d drugged her and stripped her naked, bathing her—entirely too grievous. But then he’d painstakingly unsnarled her hair, instead of shearing it off, which must have taken hours. A generosity of kindness she wouldn’t have expected from him.

The man had honor and compassion in him, even if he didn’t let the world see it.

Murmurs came from the library and she heard footsteps approaching the door. Sylvie came out of the room.

“Close the door behind you,” Thomas barked out behind her.

Sylvie’s lips grimaced for one second before a smile made way onto her face and she turned to nod at Thomas as she clicked the door closed.

A heavy sigh lifted Sylvie’s creamy chest above her low-cut dress, and her forehead dropped onto the back of the door.

Maybe Thomas was exhausting Sylvie as much as he was exhausting her, just in a different way.

It took Sylvie a moment to stand straight and look around, and she spied Izzie. Sylvie walked over to her, her head shaking as she whispered, “He is all yours.”

Izzie heaved a sympathetic breath, her lips pursing. “No luck?”

“The man is a brick wall.”

Izzie nodded. “You will get him. Has anyone ever been able to resist you?”

“There will eventually be a first.”

Izzie grinned. “I don’t think it’s this one.” She pointed upwards. “You’ll be in your bed tonight, just in case he changes his mind?”

“As always, though no minds have changed as of yet.” Sylvie’s look swept over Izzie’s face. “And you are like the walking dead right now because of it. I hate that I cannot help you at night more.”

Izzie shrugged. “He will break soon enough, and I’ll get back to sleep. Until then, if I’m lucky, he’ll be passed out earlier, rather than later, tonight.”

“God speed to that.”

Izzie squeezed Sylvie’s arm. “We can hope.”

Sylvie moved off down the shadowed corridor, disappearing to her room.

For as much as Izzie liked Sylvie’s company, there was something about being alone at this time of night, when the halls of the castle were silent and she could feel the heartbeat of the ancient stones around her. An odd peace in it.

An odd peace in watching Thomas succumb to demons of the past.

In the first day that she’d been able to wander about the castle, Izzie had found a servant’s hallway that led to the earl’s dressing chamber next to his bedroom. The perfect spot to spy upon him, and she’d spent the nights during the last week standing at attention with the door cracked, watching Thomas sit in a chair and drink himself into a stupor while he stared out at the dark sky.

He either drank in his room, or he took care of his alcohol intake in the study or library, sometimes not making it to his bed at all.

Several nights she’d watched him fall unconscious in the hallway, or slumped over his desk, or half hanging off the edge of a wingback chair in the library.

As though the man was wholly incapable of falling asleep without half a whisky bottle swimming in his gut.

It hurt, viscerally, in her soul, to watch him.

He wasn’t the usual drunk. No. He was drinking damn hard to forget something. She recognized it well enough.

But at this pace, he would drink himself to death before he managed to throw himself off a cliff.

Or maybe this was his way to avoid taking that step into the abyss. Saving himself. Dead-to-the-world drunk was at least still alive.

Which left her with one nagging question.

What in the hell had happened to him?